There are a lot of very interesting projects in this fellowship that I am very interested to hear about as the fellowship goes on. After getting to know some of the people and their projects through the introduction posts as well as the breakout room discussions, I can tell that there are going to be some very insightful research projects. This is my first time doing a research project, but I know that some people in the fellowship are more experienced in doing research. One of the main things I would like to learn is how to do research effectively. I believe that there is no better way to learn this than from people my age who have already gone through the process. I also liked the variety of projects that people are doing. There are some STEM projects that seem very interesting and there are some social science projects that also seem very interesting. I was particularly interested in Sarah Hulse’s project about using ‘war language’ when talking about people who have breast cancer. After hearing Sarah talk about her project and reading her introduction post, I really looked at using common words like fighting or battling breast cancer in a different way.

I think that my project falls into the social sciences field, and I think that Madhura’s project of examining how mental health literacy in Latinx parents affects their children is similar to mine. In her introduction post Madhura said that she is planning on having eligible Latinx parent fill out a questionnaire to help gather data. I will also be sending out questionnaires to participants in my study. Obviously the forms will be different, but the recruitment for our studies will likely be similar.

I believe that there are a ton of benefits to working in this interdisciplinary fashion. After looking through the posts, it is evident to me that there are a ton of students who are very knowledgable on a wide range of topics. That can be very helpful to have ‘experts’ so readily available. One can never predict what new questions may come up during a research project, so it is always nice to have someone who can help you out. For example, my project may require some chi square analysis as well as some other statistics knowledge. I have never taken a stats class, but with all of the different majors in the fellowship there is likely a student or scholar mentor who can help me. The only (kind of) obstacle that I can think of is that because we all are knowledgable on different topics it might be kind of hard to explain our projects to other people. However, I put a ‘kind of’ there because I believe that is actually another benefit. Being about to explain a project to people who don’t have as much knowledge on the subject as you do is definitely a necessary skill for life, and I think its good for us to develop it now.